Tag: john f kennedy

Just three weeks before the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated, the FBI declared in a newly released analysis that the civil rights leader was “a whole-hearted” communist who had a series of affairs, including with folk singer Joan Baez

But historians quickly denounced the 20-page document, dated March 21, saying the FBI’s obsession with King resulted in numerous falsehoods that were later discounted.

The FBI report, which was among the 676 files that the National Archive released Friday, provide detail about one of King’s closest advisers, Stanley Levison, a New York lawyer and businessman who helped finance the Communist Party before meeting the civil rights leader in 1956.

The document claimed King was heavily influenced by Levison.

“The course King chooses to follow at this critical time could have momentous impact on the future of race relations in the United States,” the document’s introduction reads. “And for that reason this paper has been prepared to give some insight into the nature of the man himself as well as the nature of his views, goals, objectives, tactics and the reasons therefor.”

But David Garrow, a Pulitzer Prize-winning author and historian, dismissed the allegations as false, saying they are the result of then-FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover’s unhealthy, if not delusional, obsession with the civil rights leader.

“The number one thing I’ve learned in 40 years of doing this, is just because you see it in a top-secret document, just because someone had said it to the FBI, doesn’t mean it’s all accurate,” Garrow told The Washington Post, citing the infamous dossier that contains salacious allegations against President Trump.

Garrow pointed out that King had been under heavy FBI surveillance throughout the 1960s and never found evidence of communist connections.

If anything, the document, titled “MARTIN LUTHER KING, JR., A CURRENT ANALYSIS,” provided more insight into the FBI’s preoccupation with the Communist Party and attempts to discredit King.

“I think the number one takeaway historically is how, even in March of 1968, the FBI continues to be bizarrely preoccupied with how important the Communist Party USA is. ... The Communist Party, by 1968, is of no importance to anything,” Garrow said. “These incredibly exaggerated statements of communist influence are exactly what the FBI wants to hear.”

What Hoover failed to pass on to President Lyndon B. Johnson was that King had distanced himself from communists.

“There are things I wanted to say renouncing communism in theory, but they would not go along with it. We wanted to say that it was an alien philosophy contrary to us, but they wouldn’t go along with it,” King told adviser Bayard Rustin in May 1965, when King, Garrow wrote.

The FBI warned Dallas police about a threat to kill Lee Harvey Oswald, but cops didn’t provide adequate protection, according to information found in the release of 2,800 previously classified files relating to the assassination of John F. Kennedy.

FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover issued the warning to police about a potential death threat to Oswald after he was in police custody.

“There is nothing further on the Oswald case except that he is dead,” Hoover wrote on Nov. 24, 1963. “Last night we received a call in our Dallas office from a man talking in a calm voice and saying he was a member of a committee organized to kill Oswald.”

Hoover continued: “We at once notified the chief of police and he assured us Oswald would be given sufficient protection. This morning we called the chief of police again warning of the possibility of some effort against Oswald and again he assured us adequate protection would be given.

“However, this was not done.”

Hoover indicated he didn’t have “firm” information about Jack Ruby, the man who fatally shot Oswald, but said there were rumors of “underworld activity.”

An FBI scrambled to Oswald’s deathbed but was unable to get a confession.

Less than an hour after Oswald died, Hoover expressed concerns about quelling conspiracy theories about the assassination of JFK.

“The thing I am concerned about, and so is (deputy attorney general) Mr. Katzenbach, is having something issued so we can convince the public that Oswald is the real assassin,” he said.

Initially, Cuban exiles initially suggested a larger reward while in a meeting with U.S. officials.

“It was felt that the $150,000 to assassinate FIDEL CASTRO plus $5,000 expense money was too high,” the memo noted.

Russia: VP Lyndon Johnson behind assassination

Russian sources in the KGB insisted it had “data” that showed Vice President Lyndon Johnson was responsible for the assassination of JFK.

FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover sent a top secret memo to the White House that claimed the assassination was a “well-organized conspiracy.”

The 1966 memo cited a Russian mole who claimed the assassination was am “ultra-right” plot to create a “coup.”

“They seemed convinced that the assassination was not the deed of one man, but it arose out of a carefully planned campaign in which several people played a part,’” said the memo.

Bizarre schemes to kill Castro

The U.S. considered some wild schemes to kill Castro, including an underwater, “booby-trapped spectacular shell” that “would be loaded with explosives” to blow up Castro when her went diving.

“After investigation it was determined that there was no shell in the Caribbean area large enough to hold a sufficient amount of explosive which was spectacular enough to attract the attention of Castro.”

Other assassination plots included contaminating Castro’s diving suit, giving him botulism in his food and sending a lone gunman to shoot the dictator.

“The plans involved a number of bizarre schemes and, in at least one instance, involved some contact with organized criminal elements. Among the means considered were poison, botulism pills, and the use of Cuban Exile groups,” said one intelligence report on Cuba.

Johnson a member of the KKK?

An informant told the FBI in May 1964 that the KKK “had documented proof that President Johnson was formerly a member of the Klan in Texas during the early days of his political career.”

No documented proof was provided to back up the claims.

Johnson, some say reluctantly, pushed through the Civil Rights Act of 1964 to outlaw racial discrimination.

More than 3,000 documents related to the assassination of President John F. Kennedy are expected to be released by the federal government Thursday.

President Trump said he doesn’t plan to prevent the release of the documents, which include repots from the CIA and FBI.

“Subject to the receipt of further information, I will be allowing, as President, the long blocked and classified JFK FILES to be opened,” Trump tweeted Saturday.

The disclosure is long overdue, said Boston University professor and presidential historian Tom Whalen.

“It might cause some embarrassments to the intelligence agencies because J. Edgar Hoover, who ran the FBI, in previously released documents basically admitted the FBI screwed up on November 22. Lee Harvey Oswald shouldn’t have been a country mile of the presidential motorcade. They should have detained him but the intelligence agencies were not communicating to one another,” he told CBS.http://boston.cbslocal.com/2017/10/22/jfk-documents-release-fbi-cia/

A 1992 law, known as the John F. Kennedy Assassination Records Collection Act, called for the release on the 25th anniversary of the law.

When bullets were fired in Dallas on November 22, 1963, many of the Secret Service agents hired to protect President John F. Kennedy failed in their duties, the Vanity Fair reports in an examination of the actions taken by the White House security detail.

“Roy Kellerman, the leader of the security detail, did not seem to know what was happening. He thought a firecracker had gone off,” Vanity Fair reporter Susan Cheever wrote. “William Greer, at the wheel of the president’s car, did not immediately speed up or swerve away from the shots. Paul Landis, in the vehicle trailing Kennedy’s, did not jump forward to protect the president with his body; neither did Jack Ready. Clint Hill, riding a few feet behind and to the president’s left, was part of the First Lady’s detail. After the fatal shot was fired, he leapt onto the rear of the presidential limousine and kept her from jumping off the back.”

Of the 28 Secret Service agents who were in Dallas that fateful day, nine out until the early mornings. Some were drinking and sleep deprived.

Abraham Bolden, who wrote a book about his experience as agent protecting Kennedy, said he believes the drinking contributed to a “lackadaisical response.”

“The biggest problem I ran into with the Secret Service when I was an agent was their constant drinking,” he told Vanity Fair. “When we would get to a place one of the first things they would do was stock up with liquor. They would drink and then we would go to work.”

Agents often worked double shifts and were sleep-deprived, wrote Agent Gerald Blaine sin his book The Kennedy Detail.

“Working double shifts had become so common since Kennedy became president that it was now almost routine. The three eight-hour shift rotation operated normally when the president was in the White House, but when he was traveling . . . there simply weren’t enough bodies.”

The Secret Service has requested $113.4 million to guard the Republican primary winner in the general election — $4 million more than in 2008 and about two-thirds more than 2004.

The Secret Service has a long history of protecting those seeking the highest office in the land.

Barack Obama was the earliest candidate to receive Secret Service protection when agents began tailing the then-senator eight months before the first primary contest, in May 2007.

Campaign trail security began in 1968 with Congressional authorization to protect major presidential candidates after Robert F. Kennedy’s assassination in California.

While Obama received protection earliest, having agents at his side for 629 days. But Ronald Reagan holds the record for the most “protection days:” Over the course of three campaigns, the Secret Service protected Reagan for 791 days.